Dear Unregistered,Pardon this intrusion into your Eratosphere reading, writing, commentaries, and, ahem, all the other delights the Sphere is able to offer. But to keep it simple indeed, Eratosphere needs your help/sponsorship!

Ordinarily--and actually never before until now--I wouldn't post this personal notice to members outside the threads confines simply because there was more or less some measure of the much-needed assistance from usually a couple of handfuls--out of the hundreds active of the thousands registered--of very helpful members. But it seems things have fairly dried up--or rather, only a dribble remains--in terms of such help, even with the seasonal reminders where we bump the sponsorship threads, with as much restraint as possible, a couple of times or so throughout the year. I could go further, but I'd rather simply point you to the relevant assistance threads to read more or to interact with:

Per our tradition, it's now time to declassify our Top-Secret Sonnet Bake-off and unveil the Who's Whos. But first, a big thank you to our Top Secret DG, for a most successful event, with a strong list of finalists. And thank you to all who submitted, and all the participants of the event. Congratulations to the winners as now revealed by our TSDG--

Coincidentally--since as the anonmyzer, I already knew the identities of all the finalists--without waiting for the voting process to even commence, I'd already asked our top-three sonneteers for their sonnets for Able Muse, print edition, given that they were the ones that had also appealed the most to me. (Still, if a different sonnet outside the above top-three had won, then as I'd promised in my follow-up contest's bonus announcement, I'd have also added it in the publication mix.). With that, my double congratulations for also achieving publication to Julie, Susan, and Elise!

Next, here are the remaining finalists in alphabetic order (and the TSDG may want to edit the result post to list all the ten finalists with the point tally for each given that it's my experience that most members, especially the finalists, want to know where they placed in the top ten):

Jayne, I will take "probably handsome" any day. I was impressed with Simon Hunt's dead-on identification of me as "a Weirdo." I confess to subterfuge in that I peppered the DG's language with British idiom ("queue," "Hol," "the Americans," etc.) for a linguistic "Zersetzung" effect--did I use them convincingly?

Yup, though I'm a incorrigible Anglophiliac, there ain't no denyin' I was a gun-totin', "Don't-Tread-On-Me" 'Merican even in ma mama's womb. Darn-tootin'. So liberating to be able to speak like myself again.

Thanks to Alex and Aaron for running this and well done Aaron for maintaining such a convincingly odd secret identity.

Congratulations Julie! A worthy winner. Even though I played annoying Devil's Advocate in my crit of 'X' it is a hugely clever poem. And really, what do I know? (seriously)

I've thoroughly enjoyed this and still can't believe I made the final. This seems as good a place as any to say this, so I will: thanks so much to everyone for making me feel welcome since I joined the 'sphere. This is a wonderful place.